The development of network technologies and information household appliance industry enable the existing separate household appliance devices to be connected via a network, so that information household appliances, which are also referred to as network household appliances, emerge.
A household gateway is necessary for connecting household appliance devices within a household to the Internet, and there are three types of existing household gateway devices, including a set-top box primarily used to enable the control of a television, a computer, and a communication gateway which is adapted for enabling access to the external of the household and networking within the household, but has a low capability of controlling the information household appliance devices.
The existing information household appliance may individually be connected to the Internet via the household gateway, or a plurality of information household appliances may communicate with the Internet via a common household gateway. If a plurality of information household appliances are connected to the household gateway and communication of the household appliances is under the control of the household gateway, a digital household system is formed. The existing household system is mainly based on a Local Area Network, and each household appliance device is equivalent to a small-scale computer. Due to the limitation of IPv4 addresses, IP addresses of devices are generally private addresses, that is, each of the household appliance devices is provided with an IP address, and IP communication between the information household appliance and the external network is conducted through Network Address Translation (NAT) process by the household gateway. However, the NAT process is relatively complex, and the household appliances have a high cost due to the deployment of the Transfer Control Protocol/Internet Protocol (TCP/IP) stack, because each of the household appliances needs to be provided with a processor to conduct the communication.
In view of the above, the existing household gateway and digital household system are disadvantageous as follows.
1) Household appliance devices are difficult to be managed in a uniform way, because various household appliance devices exchange information with the Internet by using separate household gateways in the prior art, for example, a TV set-top box is a gateway device dedicated to a TV but has little capability of controlling and managing other household appliances.
2) In the digital household system in the prior art, a gateway device communicates with an external communication network through the NAT process by the household gateway, and then reaches the information household appliances. Such a LAN communication mode is not necessary for the household system, increases the load of the household appliance devices and gateway device, and is disadvantageous in information security and management.
For example, a control instruction is sent by a user via a mobile User Equipment (UE), if the information household appliance performs strict security authentication on the instruction from the mobile UE, calculation overhead of the information household appliance is increased and the cost is increased. If loose security authentication of the instruction from the mobile UE is performed by the information household appliance, the overhead is saved, however, the security is reduced and there exists possible threaten against the security of the household information.
3) Further, for a household gateway, devices such as a CD driver and a Universal Serial Bus (USB) interface are usually provided merely on a host device of the household gateway, and are inconvenient for the user to operate.
Some household gateways may be provided with external CD drivers and USB interfaces, which increases convenience of user operation. However, special cables, such as USB cables and PCI-E interface cables, are required for the external CD drivers and USB interfaces to connect to the host device. Further, a keyboard and a mouse of the existing household gateway are connected to the host device via either a signal cable (e.g. a USB cable) or a wireless interface (e.g. a Bluetooth or infrared ray interface).
In the case where the signal cable is used to connect the host device, if the device operated by the user (for example, a device connected via a USB interface, a serial port or a parallel port, such as a keyboard, a mouse, a CD driver, a small Liquid Crystal Display screen, a speaker, an earphone microphone socket, a simulation telephone constituted of a simulation hook switch, a simulation telephone handle and a simulation telephone keyboard) is spaced from the host device by a considerable distance, cables between the device operated by the user and the host device of the gateway are difficult to be deployed. For example, if the host device is positioned on the side of a wall on which a television is located, and the device operated by the user is posited around a sofa at the side opposite to the wall, the cables are difficult to be deployed taking beauty and operation convenience into consideration.
Technical teachings of carrying a USB signal using a power line are disclosed in a paper titled “Design of Power Line Carrier Communication Module Based on USB Interface”, in which a Power Line Carrier (PLC) communication module based on a USB interface is divided into two parts of a USB signal circuit and a power line carrier modulator and demodulator circuit. In the USB signal circuit, the receiving and decoding of a USB bus serial signal, interpreting of a token ring packet, format checking, and transmission error handling is implemented by hardware of an interface chip, and the power line carrier modulator and demodulator is designed to include an input filter circuit, an output cache circuit, an output filter circuit and an output power amplification circuit, and a coupling circuit is used to decouple a signal from the power line and couple a signal to the power line.
In the case where a wireless interface is used to connect the host device, a relatively high communication rate (above 10 Mbps) is required between the external CD driver or USB interface and the host device, and if a Wireless Local Area Network or Bluetooth is used, there may be wireless interference between the Wireless Local Area Network or Bluetooth and other nearby wireless devices at the same frequency band or an adjacent frequency band, and the data transmission rate and quality may be degrade.
Some external CD drivers and interface devices employing a wireless interface are necessarily provided with batteries, and the standby time and call time thereof may be decreased significantly after the batteries are charged for certain times. The replacement of the battery may increase the cost of the user and increase resource consumption.